I Rule Rome with a God-Tier AI-Chapter 156: The Doctor’s Duty

The moon was a sliver of silver in the ink-black Roman sky. Alex, wrapped in a simple, dark cloak, his face obscured by its hood, made his way through the now-quiet streets of the Subura. He was escorted by a single Praetorian, similarly disguised, a silent shadow moving two paces behind him. He had told the palace he was retiring for the night, a necessary lie to grant himself this moment of anonymity. He needed to see the progress of his great work for himself, not through the sanitized reports of his commanders, but with his own eyes.

The change in the district was already palpable. The main thoroughfare, once a river of mud and refuse, was now a wide, excavated trench, its sides neatly shored up with timber. Piles of newly quarried travertine and stacks of Celer's pre-cast concrete pipes lined the street, waiting to be laid. The air, while still thick with the smell of humanity, had lost some of its choking, foul edge. By day, this place was a hive of activity, a blend of legionary discipline and civilian labor. By night, it was a quiet construction site, guarded by sentries.

As Alex passed a large, canvas tent set back from the main trench, a structure far cleaner and more brightly lit than the surrounding buildings, a cry of pain cut through the night. It was a sharp, masculine sound, quickly stifled. Against his better judgment, drawn by a curiosity he couldn't suppress, Alex pushed aside the tent flap and looked inside.

The tent was an improvised medical station. It was brilliantly lit by several of the new, experimental gas lanterns from Vulcania, their steady blue-white flame casting stark shadows. The air inside smelled not of sickness and despair, but of boiled linen, wine vinegar, and the sharp, clean scent of carbolic soap—a simple antiseptic Alex had taught the legionary medics to make from coal tar. Neatly organized shelves held bandages, surgical tools, and jars of herbs.

In the center of this pocket of cleanliness and order, a man was bent over a legionary who lay on a cot, his hand a mangled, bloody mess. The man was not a legionary medic; he was older, with a focused, intellectual intensity in his eyes and a beard streaked with grey. He worked with a calm, deliberate precision, cleaning the wound with a confidence that spoke of immense experience.

Alex felt a jolt of recognition so strong it was like being struck. He knew that face. He had seen it in history books, in the sad, weary portraits of a genius. It was Galen of Pergamon, the most famous physician in the Roman world, the personal doctor to his own "father," Marcus Aurelius.

History recorded that Galen, disgusted by the unstable and anti-intellectual reign of the historical Commodus, had packed his bags and left Rome in 180 AD, not long after Marcus Aurelius's death. He should have been in Pergamon by now, dissecting apes and writing his medical treatises. Yet here he was, in the heart of the Subura, in the middle of the night, tending to the crushed hand of a common soldier.

Alex stepped fully into the tent, his Praetorian guard waiting discreetly outside. Galen looked up, his brow furrowed in annoyance at the interruption.

"If you are injured, wait your turn. If you are merely curious, get out. This is a place of healing, not a spectacle," the physician said, his voice clipped and sharp.

"I knew you in the palace," Alex said, his own voice low, hoping the man would not recognize him. "You attended the Divine Marcus. I had heard you were leaving the city."

Galen paused in his work, looking up at the cloaked figure before him. He scrutinized Alex's face in the bright lamplight, but saw only a young patrician with concerned eyes, not the Emperor himself. He gave a weary sigh.

"I was," Galen admitted, turning his attention back to the soldier's hand. "I was preparing to leave this city to its own madness. I saw nothing left for a man of science, a man of logic, in a Rome I believed was about to be ruled by an unstable boy-gladiator."

He carefully began to align the broken bones in the soldier's fingers, the man grunting in pain. "But then... this." Galen gestured with his chin to the clean bandages, the organized tools, the bright, steady light. "The Emperor, for all his rumored madness, for all his bizarre religious proclamations, has ordered this... this miracle. He has sent his soldiers not to kill their fellow citizens, but to cleanse their city. He provides funds from his own treasury for clean water, for sewers to carry away the filth. He provides my station with wine to clean wounds, with fresh linen for bandages, with this incredible, smokeless light to work by at night."

Galen looked up again, his eyes filled not with awe, but with a physician's pragmatic wonder. "I am a man of evidence, sir. And the evidence is undeniable. I have been keeping records. In this one month since the work began in this district, I have seen fewer children die of the summer fever, of the bloody flux, than in any summer I can remember. The change is real. It is measurable."

He shook his head, a look of profound, conflicted purpose on his face. "I am a physician. My duty is not to emperors or to the shifting winds of politics. My duty is to the human body, to the easing of suffering. And right now, the greatest work of healing in the entire world is happening right here, in this ditch in the Subura. I came to the conclusion that I could not leave. My conscience, my duty as a doctor, would not allow it."

Alex was deeply, profoundly moved. This was it. This was the first, tangible proof that his grand, sweeping plans were actually saving lives. It wasn't an abstract economic model or a military victory. It was a child who would live to see the next summer, a fact attested to by the greatest medical mind of the age. It was a victory more satisfying than any he had yet achieved.

Galen then looked at him closely, his analytical gaze assessing Alex's fine, clean hands and his educated manner of speaking. "You have the look of a man who is not afraid of blood," the physician said, his tone shifting from philosophical to practical. "And you are not swaying with drink. I need help. My own hands are not what they were, and this man's bones must be set perfectly or he will never hold a shovel again, let alone a sword. Hold him steady for me. Press down on his shoulder. Firmly."

In that moment, under the bright, clean light of his own captured technology, Alex was not the Emperor of Rome. He was not a god-prophet waging a secret war. He was not a man with a supercomputer whispering in his ear. He was just Alex Carter, a project manager from the 21st century who knew the importance of a sterile field and a steady hand.

He pushed back his hood, put his cloak aside, and rolled up his sleeves. He did as he was told, pressing down firmly on the soldier's shoulder, murmuring words of encouragement as Galen, with expert precision, manipulated the broken fingers back into alignment. He spent the next hour in the tent, an anonymous assistant to a master craftsman. He helped clean wounds, held down patients as they had broken bones set or stitches put in, and listened, utterly fascinated, to Galen's brilliant, empirical observations about the nature of infection, the importance of diet, and the body's own remarkable ability to heal. He saw his own modern, rudimentary knowledge of first-aid meeting Galen's classical expertise, a bridge across two thousand years of medicine.

When he finally left the tent, the first hints of dawn were painting the eastern sky. His hands smelled of carbolic soap and dried blood, and his muscles ached from holding down struggling men. But his heart was filled with a feeling he had not truly felt in a long time, through all the battles and political schemes: a simple, unadulterated, and overwhelming pride.

He had just received validation for his work, not from a fawning senator or a converted general, but from the one man whose opinion, in that moment, mattered more than any other. He had been reminded that saving Rome was not just about grand strategies and cosmic wars. It was about this. A cleaner tent. A saved hand. A child who would live to see another summer. This quiet, profound encounter reinvigorated his sense of purpose, reminding him of the human reason behind all his lies, his manipulations, and his terrible secrets.